Introduction

This book presents a fundamental shift in the way we approach, discuss, and evaluate Joyce’s non-fictional writings. Rather than simply proposing or applying new methodologies, it historicises and reconceives the critical assumptions that have shaped scholarly approaches to these works for over half a century, showing that non-fiction as a categorical distinction, no matter how sensible it appears, crumbles under closer inspection.

Bringing into conversation a group of key Joyce scholars, this volume acts not only as a vital reimagining of our critical relationship to Joyce’s non-fiction, but as a contribution to similar debates being carried out across the broad range of modernist studies.